Want to Extend the Bush Tax Cuts?

[Cancel 2018. 3]

The logic behind deficit spending on, say, infrastructure is similar to a family man being out of work. He's unemployed and his wife is working. The man can sit at home and do nothing while he continues to cost money (food, clothes, a few beers) or they can borrow some money and he can build a deck or finish the basement or paint the interior of the home. When he returns to work he starts to pay back the loan. If he did none of those things and waited until he was working he wouldn't have time so he would have to pay someone else to do them.

The same applies to governments. Now is the time to get contracts as contractors are looking for work. Their rates will be lower than during a busy season. The men they hire will stop receiving unemployment or welfare and start doing something for their money. It's a win-win situation.

When the economy picks up and wages/contractor rates climb the government won't require as many contractors. The government will save money by not requiring expensive contractors plus they will have saved money by not paying welfare and other benefits and getting nothing in return.

For example, let's say a skilled worker makes $50,000/yr. If he has a family of four to support he may collect $900/month on welfare and $500 worth of food stamps. (http://www.welfareinfo.org/payments/) $1400/month X 12 months = $16,800/yr.

If he is hired the government will be getting a $50,000/yr employee for $33,200/yr. as they are already paying $16,800. ($50,000 - $16,800 = $33,200)

while the theory works....in theory

does it ever have a climax? in that....how long do you continue to borrow? how much can you continue to borrow? the 80's, 90's and most of the 00's saw americans and the government spending like drunken sailors....many state and local governments now admit this, the federal....nah....the money is endless....

states have had to face reality and cut budgets, counties likewise, granted, they don't operate the same as the feds....however....why is it the federal government gets a pass? at some point does lending become disasterous for the country? if so....when...if not....why?

 

[Cancel 2018. 3]

Spending cuts will come and go, but overall spending will stay, and grow.

legion troll's most honest troll

 

[Don Quixote]

while the theory works....in theory

does it ever have a climax? in that....how long do you continue to borrow? how much can you continue to borrow? the 80's, 90's and most of the 00's saw americans and the government spending like drunken sailors....many state and local governments now admit this, the federal....nah....the money is endless....

states have had to face reality and cut budgets, counties likewise, granted, they don't operate the same as the feds....however....why is it the federal government gets a pass? at some point does lending become disasterous for the country? if so....when...if not....why?

when there is a bad economic situation, like now, the government deficit spends to boost the economy and stops deficit spending when the crisis is over - during the clinton years an actual budget surplus was attained - it took discipline that congress lacked during the gwb years

ps tax cuts do not pay for themselves and must be counted as deficit spending - tax cuts for the lower and middle classes during a downturn may help but tax increases for the upper classes that are not among the unemployed help pay for the deficit spending - at least this is the thinking of most economists...

 

[DamnYankee]

Why do people fall for this shit? Do we have a foggy fucking clue what the economy is going to be like in 2030? Hell, they got it wrong just predicting what today's economy would look like when they were making predictions a year ago.

Scare mongering by the tax-everything-in-site and spend even more liberals.

Not to mention the age old lie about the tax cuts only affecting the rich.

Remember what happened when they taxed luxury yachts? Thousands of low and middle class folks lost their jobs.

 

[christiefan915]

We either want a smaller decifit or we don't.
Think our Dems can sell a knife to a man who's hanging?

My opinion, better end those tax cuts for the rich, you got to start bringing some revenue in! signal

Greenspan thinks the cuts should expire and he was for them before he was against them.

The fate of the tax cuts, passed in 2001 and 2003 under George W. Bush and slated to expire at the end of the year, is the latest political football in election-year Washington. President Obama has supported letting lapse the tax cut on households earning more than $250,000 a year.

Count Greenspan in the lapse camp.

“I’m very much in favor of tax cuts, but not with borrowed money,” Mr. Greenspan said on “Meet the Press” Sunday. “The problem that we’ve gotten into in recent years is spending programs with borrowed money, tax cuts with borrowed money, and at the end of the day, that proves disastrous.”

But Greenspan has a flip-flop history on the Bush tax cuts. It was a surprise in 2001 when he supported Bush’s proposed tax cuts, saying they were needed to erode dangerously high budget surpluses. “In today’s context, where tax reduction appears required in any event . . . to assist in forestalling the accumulation of private assets, starting that process sooner rather than later likely would help smooth that transition,” he said.

He later said his support was based on the wrong assumption that budget surpluses were sustainable. “If confronted with the same evidence we had back then, I would recommend exactly what I recommended then. It turns out we were all wrong,” Greenspan told a Senate panel in 2005.

Greenspan, legendary for his murky economic pronouncements at the Fed, is plainspoken now. He also said on “Meet the Press” that he has “never seen the type of animosity between government and Wall Street.” And he said that the U.S. economy feels like it’s in a recession because the recession’s turnaround has been largely confined to wealthy people and large companies.

“The rest of the economy — small business, small banks, and a very significant amount of the labor force, which is in tragic unemployment… is pulling the economy apart,” Mr. Greenspan said.

http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/08/02/greenspan-was-for-the-bush-tax-cutbefore-he-was-against-it/